Graffiti
by LadieLazarus
Summary: Jagged Fel's newly discovered Uncle takes him for a tour of Starfighter Command.


Title: Graffiti

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: None, Jaina/Jag pre 'ship

Rating: PG-13

Summary: After joining forces with the GA, Jagged Fel is given a tour of Starfighter Command's main base by his new acquaintance, and family member, Wedge Antilles.

"And this is where we keep all of requisition forms and stuff like that." Wedge gestured towards an office covered, floor-to-ceiling in shelving units containing various pieces of flimsy. "Although, if you need any of them, you'll have to go through Squeaky, and I promise you that it will not be a pleasant interaction."

"Who is Squeaky, sir?" Jagged hadn't said much, so far, preferring to simply nod in acknowledgment. His nephew, honestly, seemed a bit stunned by the transition. Wedge supposed that, to someone raised with the stringent guidelines of Soontir Fel, the somewhat loose organization of SFC must have been a bit shocking. Apparently, he had decided that personnel was one of those things to ask about.

"Our Protocol droid quartermaster, officially. Unofficially, he's the biggest pain the butt you'll ever meet, and is also the most verbally abusive droid I've ever met." Wedge smiled at his nephew, unsurprised when the boy didn't return it. He hadn't really seen Jagged smile since he'd met him.

"Your quartermaster is a droid, sir?" Jag seemed incredulous. "I've heard some crazy stories about Starfighter Command, but I wasn't expecting that."

"He's good at his job." Wedge shrugged. "You don't have to call me sir. I'm not your superior. I'm technically a civilian."

"Yes, si-- Uncle." Jag said the word as something unfamiliar, foreign in both pronunciation and meaning. Wedge acknowledged the effort with a smile and a brief nod.

"There we go." He clapped Jag on the shoulder. "Much better. Now, I'll show you the pilot's lounge."

"If you don't mind, sir," Wedge allowed the slip, recognizing it as a simple reflex. "I'd just as soon see where you run your simulators."

As much as Jag hated to admit it, if he was going to train with this government, he'd best become familiar with their fighters. He would, more than likely, be forced to abandon his clawcraft at some point in the near future, and he'd really like to have some experience in anything else that he was supposed to fly.

"Same room." Wedge shrugged.

Once again, Jag looked slightly taken aback.

"Oh."

He fell into step beside Wedge.

Wedge could only imagine what his nephew had been told about the Republic forces growing up. He knew that the Empire loved to come down hard on any perceived weakness, lack of discipline, organization, or any other lack that they believed the opposition possessed. He also knew that any time Imperial forces were defeated by the enemy, be it Republic or Rebellion, they tended to admonish their soldiers using those same flaws as a hammer to drive the failure home.

He assumed that Jagged had probably told himself, in order to warm himself up to the idea of working for the temporarily joint military, that the stories he'd been told were probably exaggerated.

Wedge had the sinking feeling that his poor nephew was about to be seriously demoralized.

They arrived at the pilot's lounge. The door was closed, and Jagged paused to read the writing on the door.

"Uncle?"

"Yeah?"

"'Simulators' doesn't ordinarily have a 'trill' in the beginning, there, does it?"*

Wedge snorted. Sure enough, the word 'simulators had been doctored to read 'Stimulators'. Again.

"Ah. Yes. Well, that would be Janson, I'm sure."

"'Major Janson?"

"The very same." Wedge looked at Jagged, waiting for the horror to dawn. Instead, Soontir's son seemed to be fighting the urge to smile. Wedge turned to him, puzzled. "You're not horrified at yet another lapse in discipline."

Jag looked reproached.

"I hadn't thought it was that obvious. I'm sorry." He shrugged. "I'm just not used to seeing stuff like this go on in a military unit, and for one with Rogue Squadron's record, I had expected..." He gestured, trailing off.

"The 181st?" Wedge smiled.

Jag nodded, grateful that the statement seemed to cause no resentment or anger in his uncle.

"Not exactly how I ran things, no. But, I think you'll find that we still manage to get the job done."

"Your record suggests as much." Jag nodded simply. He gestured towards the door. "And as for this, I have found that it's hard to find someone who wasn't a bit of an idiot straight out of the academy. My dad has even told me stories that make his prominent military career seem quite impossible."

Wedge placed his forehead into his hand. On some level, he hated to do this to his nephew. On another, it was going to be sort of fun. He lifted his head again, and spoke.

"Jag, uhh, Wes does this at least once a week." He shook his head. "We fix it every time, but he's just incorrigible."

Jagged's face went slack. For a minute, it looked to Wedge as though he might actually vomit. Jag's mouth moved a few times, words failing to form.

Finally, the young pilot lifted his gaze to the door again, before turning back to Wedge.

"I-- The-- You're an _elite. Military. Unit!" _The words tore from his throat. "You have, collectively, more kill markings and better dogfight records than any military unit in history! You have accomplished more questionably possible missions, defeated more brilliantly orchestrated offensives, and outsmarted some of the best military minds that the Empire has ever produced, and, sadly, my father has occasionally been counted in that number! You have essentially become that story that some Imperial pilots tell each other around the camp fire. How in the seven hells can you conduct yourselves this way and still succeed?"

Jag scrubbed a hand over his face, clearly distraught at showing so much emotion. He fought for a moment before clearly getting himself back to his typical level of control. "I'm sorry."

Wedge let out a belly laugh so loud that people walking the corridor ahead of them turned to look at them. He waved at them, and they continued on their way.

"Jag, you're going to have to do something if you're going to survive, here."

"And that would be?"

"While you're here, you're going to encounter much more of this. You're going to see things that, in the Imperial military, would have resulted in immediate court martial. We are not as strongly disciplined, to say the least, and we don't necessarily always conduct ourselves with the same air of... entitlement that a unit of equal accomplishment might do in the Empire."

"I can definitely agree to that."

"Okay, and that's fair. But, I want you to remember something every time you come into contact with these incidents."

"What?"

"You're going to have to remember everything you just said about Rogue Squadron, because it's all true. You are going to have to recognize that there might be more than one way to train a group of incredibly gifted pilots, and that sometimes the other way is better."

Jagged considered this for a moment.

"This is going to be more difficult for me than I had originally thought."

"Probably." Wedge nodded.

"Would you mind if I stayed her for a bit and ran a few simulators? Flying helps me think."

"Go ahead." Wedge nodded again. "I'll meet you in the cafeteria, say around 1400."

"That'll be fine." Jag disappeared through the slightly-edited door.

Once inside, he saw that a small group had gathered around one of the closed simulator pods along the wall of the lounge. They were watching the simulated dogfight on a screen hanging on the wall. The pilot they were watching, designated as Eleven, was flying through an incredibly difficult scenario as though they were eating dinner somewhere.

One by one, other closed pods in the room opened as the pilots inside were killed off in the simulation. Each killed pilot depositing a handful of credits onto a table on the side before joining the crowd of spectators.

Jagged had rarely seen such skilled maneuvering. Whoever this pilot was, they were amazing. This simulator was shaping up to be the sort of exercise that, in the Empire, would have been recorded and played for recruits

Finally, after much money had piled up on the table, and every other pilot had been ejected from the simulator, the cockpit on Eleven's simulator popped open, and the pilot emerged to applause, cheers and grumbles from the defeated.

The pilot was a woman, pretty, slender and delicately built. Dark brown hair swung free of her helmet as she turned to accept the compliments of her colleagues. She strode to the table where she picked up the stack of credits, placing them in her pocket.

"You cheated, Sticks." One of the other pilots spoke up.

"Never." She shook her head. "Unless by cheated, you mean I'm an incredible pilot with superior skill. If that's the case, I must inform you that you are incredibly correct." She grinned a wry, half-grin. It was cocky, but the sort of cocky that comes with well-deserved confidence. "Now, if you'll all excuse me, I believe that my brother is back on planet, and I'd like to see him for a bit. Looks like I can even afford to pick up the tab for lunch."

She turned, moving towards the door to leave. On her way out, she caught Jag's eye and winked. "Heya, flyboy."

Then she was gone.

"She always wins." One of the defeated pilots shook his head and rolled his eyes, his braintails twitching in irritation. "Freakin' Jedi."

The crowd of pilots mostly ignored Jagged aside from scattered nods as they moved out into the hallway, still laughing and talking.

Jag figured that his newly discovered uncle was right. He was going to have to further investigate this government's ways of training if it could produce pilots like that.

He was also, quite possibly, going to have to learn who this Jedi was.


End file.
